When the Clock Strikes One
by Kaiser Washington
Summary: Friday nights are movie nights for the high school basketball players of Kanagawa. A scary movie one such night marks the start of a series of horrific adventures. Edited and re-uploaded. COMPLETE.
1. Chapter 1

Summary: Friday nights are movie nights for the high school basketball players of Kanagawa. A scary movie one such night marks the start of a series of horrific adventures. Ongoing. Edited and re-uploaded (with no little misgiving). **  
**

A/N: Originally published between March and May 2008, making it one of my first fics on this site. I deleted this way before the "Purge", and have lately been revising it pretty heavily, mostly for grammar and choice of words. I made some embarrassingly bad choices with regard to characterization in the foolish days of my youth, which I have rectified. Still editing this, but I will try uploading chapters periodically.

Also, I've used the character names (i.e. first names for some characters, last names for others) that are used in the English dub, because that was all I was familiar with in the time period adverted to above.

EDIT: I've restored the names to their proper form. Not a big deal, since I'm editing this story anyway.

* * *

 **When the Clock Strikes One**

 **Chapter 1**

Friday nights were movie nights for the high school basketball players of Kanagawa. Every Friday Mitsui, Rukawa, Sakuragi, and Kogure of Shohoku, Sendoh of Ryonan, Maki, Jin, and Kiyota of Kainan, and Fujima and Hanagata of Shoyo would meet at one of their houses to watch movies.

This Friday it was Sendoh's turn. Sendoh was waiting in the living room for his friends to arrive.

"They're late," he said to himself, glancing up at the wall clock.

The doorbell rang, and Sendoh got up to open the door.

"Hey guys," he said cheerfully. "You're late."

"Sorry," said Kogure. "We were kind of caught up at Sakuragi's house."

Sakuragi fumed.

"Rukawa's the reason we're late," he complained.

"Whatever. Come on in."

They stepped into the foyer.

"Parents are not in town," said Sendoh, leading the way to his home theater.

"What are we watching tonight?" said Kiyota.

Sendoh snickered evilly, and turned around, holding up a DVD.

It was _When the Clock Strikes One_.

"No way!" said Kiyota, eyes widening. "That's the scariest movie of the century."

"Are you sure you want to watch this?" said Jin.

"Of course," said Sendoh, smiling widely.

"I only ask because I heard that about half a dozen people died of heart attacks at the first screening."

Sendoh waved aside Jin's concerns.

"It was probably because of the loud noises. I'll turn down the volume in the loud parts."

"When do we start?" said Mitsui.

"Ten-thirty," said Sendoh.

It was 10:20 then.

"What do we do until then?"

"I'll make us some popcorn."

Sendoh went into the kitchen, followed by Jin and Kogure, and returned a short while later with five big bowls of popcorn.

Then they started the movie.

Everyone munched on popcorn excitedly. Even Rukawa was wide awake. Hanagata wiped his glasses with a handkerchief as the previews gave way to the movie.

The very first scene was a scary one. It started with a teenage boy who lived in a large house all by himself. He came home from a party late one night, and heard voices in his bedroom. When he entered he saw a woman hanging from the ceiling by a noose. Her skin was decomposed, and her eyes were wide and glassy. Her body turned gently in the air as the rope twisted and untwisted against gravity. Then suddenly the camera closed in on her face, and her mouth curled into a grotesque smile, revealing rotting teeth and gums. The boy screamed. A week later, the neighbors, who grew suspicious about the boy's sudden disappearance, broke into the house to find the boy hanging from the ceiling where the ghost woman had hung earlier.

Everyone's eyes were wide with fear. Kogure was watching in excitement, Rukawa was still, Mitsui frowned slightly, and Kiyota and Sakuragi were shaking. Jin swallowed a few times, and Maki sat with his arms folded and a serious expression on his face. Hanagata was smiling from ear to ear, and Fujima's eyes were narrowed. Sendoh felt a chill run down his spine, and suspected that hair gel was not the only thing keeping his hair spiky that evening.

The movie switched to a different scene. A young woman returned to her apartment late one night, and entered without turning on the lights. She worked in construction, and set her hardhat down on the couch with a sigh. Then she went into the kitchen to grab a bite to eat. She opened the fridge with her back to the kitchen door. The camera focused on the door, where the silhouette of a woman appeared suddenly. A flash of lightning. The silhouette belonged to a sallow-skinned woman with disheveled black hair that reached the ground and dead glassy eyes. Her black dress billowed in a nonexistent wind. Then the screen turned black, and the woman's scream pierced the night.

This was enough to frighten even Rukawa, who swallowed, eyes wide as saucers. Kiyota and Sakuragi were hugging cushions, digging their nails into the fabric. Kogure was grinning almost maniacally, sitting on the edge of his seat. Mitsui yawned, Maki exhaled deeply, and Jin wiped sweat off his forehead. Hanagata, like Kogure, was on the verge of bursting into maniacal laughter. Fujima smiled lopsidedly. Sendoh shifted awkwardly in his seat, and collided with Maki, who patted him on the back.

It transpired that the woman was the ghost of a village girl who had been cursed at the age of sixteen with eternal life because she had had a child with a man out of wedlock. The curse operated on her soul, which was forced to languish on earth even after her mortal body had crumbled to dust. The spirit found eternal repose at the end of the movie. The last scene took place in the bedroom of a young girl. She lay asleep on top of white satin sheets. Haunting crib music played in the background. Suddenly the girl opened her eyes to reveal the same dead glassy eyes that the ghost woman had had.

Maki turned on the lights as soon as the movie ended.

Kogure laughed.

"I loved it!" he said exuberantly. "It was such a good movie. Thanks a bunch, Sendoh!"

Sendoh smiled tepidly. He was more shaken than he had expected to be.

"Honestly, I thought it was pretty boring," said Mitsui with a yawn. "I mean, they didn't explain how the village folks' curse worked. Like, the physics and stuff behind souls and life after death."

Kogure cast a confused look at Mitsui, since Mitsui had never struck him as the sort of person who thought a great deal about the physics of things.

"I agree with Mitchy," said Sakuragi. "It didn't make any sense."

Kiyota laughed.

"That's 'cause you're dumb."

Neither he nor Sakuragi would ever acknowledge that they had been the most frightened.

"Honestly, some scenes were just gruesome," said Fujima, who looked faintly green.

"You're too squeamish, Kenji," said Hanagata with a click of the tongue.

Maki yawned, and glanced at the wall clock. It was past midnight.

"It's getting late. I think we should make a move now."

They exited the home theater, and went out into the foyer.

A rainstorm had started outside. Flashes of lightning were visible in the windows, followed by deafening claps of thunder.

Maki groaned.

"I really don't want to walk all the way to the train station in weather like this," he said.

"You're welcome to stay," said Sendoh. "Like I said, my parents are out, and I think I can lay out some rugs, grab some blankets."

Fujima nodded.

"Thanks, Sendoh."

The grandfather clock at the bottom of the staircase began chiming.

"It's one o'clock," said Sendoh with a sigh. He laughed in an attempt to shake off his unease. "I guess we can expect weird things to start happening."

"What's the matter?" said Mitsui. "Scared?" He yawned widely. "It was just a movie."

"H'm," said Sendoh.

Then a clap of thunder shook the house, louder than the thunder had been previously, and the lights went out.

"Oh boy," said Sendoh with a sigh.

"Don't worry," said Kogure the ever-prepared boy scout. "I have a flashlight."

He unzipped his backpack in the dark, rummaged through it, and pulled out a powerful flashlight, which he proceeded to shine in everyone's face and around the foyer.

"Where are we sleeping?"

"Living room, I guess," said Sendoh, wincing as Kogure shined the flashlight in his face. "It's big enough for everyone to sleep comfortably on the floor. And get that light out of my face."

Kogure laughed sheepishly.

"Someone needs to come upstairs, and help me with the blankets and pillows," Sendoh went on.

Maki and Hanagata followed Sendoh up to the second floor, where Sendoh, using the light from Kogure's flashlight, picked out ten blankets and a few pillows from the storage closet at the far end of the hall. They carried them downstairs. Together with the cushions on the couch they would have ten pillows.

"I can sleep on the couch," said Hanagata, figuring that only nine people would be able to fit on the living room floor.

Then everyone settled down to sleep.

Silence for five minutes. Then Kiyota broke the silence.

"I can't sleep."

"Neither can I."

"Neither can I."

"It must be the adrenaline from the movie," said Hanagata. "We're going to have a hard time falling asleep, unfortunately."

Rukawa was snoring.

"Well, some of us anyway."

"Why don't I tell a story?" said Kogure in a sly tone.

"If it's scary, you can forget about it," said Maki. "It could kill some of our weak-hearted friends."

He was alluding to Kiyota and Sakuragi.

"Fine," said Kogure. He sounded disappointed.

"Do you guys believe in ghosts?" said Sendoh at length.

Kogure stammered something about desperately wanting to believe, but ultimately conceded that he didn't. Everyone else said that they didn't.

All except for Hanagata.

"As a matter fact, I do," he said. Then he went on before Maki could protest. "Let me tell you this story—a true story—that took place when I was living in Tokyo. I was about ten years old. One day we had an event or something at school, and all the students in my grade were required to participate. Parents had to come and watch their children make fools of themselves.

"A friend of mine and I had organized a play. It was a pretty brilliant concept, now that I think about it, and we were all pretty excited. An hour before the start of the show we were supposed to be in our costumes, and ready to go onstage at any time. My partner still hadn't shown up, and the teachers were getting worried, because he had a pretty major role. I mean, without him, there might as well be no play. Knowing my friend, he was too committed to the thing to miss it. If he'd been sick, his parents would have sent word through me or one of the teachers. In the end, our play had to be canceled, much to everyone's dismay.

"I was worried about him, so I went over to his house. The air was thick with gloom, for some reason. It was very strange. His parents were sitting at the table. His father's expression was dark, and his mother had been crying. They didn't have to tell me he died, because I knew at that moment that he was no more. It turned out he had been hit by a car that morning when he was crossing the street, and died on the spot. His father died of a heart attack a month later, and his mother went to live with her mother. The house was locked up, furniture and all. I guess she never tried selling it.

"A year passed. One evening I found myself walking in front of the house. The sun was setting, and it was already pretty dark. I looked up at the second-floor window of his bedroom, and saw a flickering light inside, like the light from a TV. The neighborhood was quiet enough so that I could make out the sound of his favorite video game when I walked up to the porch. It was all very strange, since the windows on the first floor were all boarded up, and a large padlock hung on the front door. The voice in the video game suddenly exclaimed, 'You won!' After that I heard a triumphant 'Yes!' in the voice of my friend. I could have recognized it in a crowd.

"I was pretty scared at this point, so I called up to the window, 'Who's there?' Then the video game stopped suddenly. The light from the TV vanished. Silence surged back into the neighborhood and into my ears. I turned to look at the house one more time as I walked back up to the street. It gaped at me like a lifeless thing. No, there couldn't possibly have been anyone inside. I decided never to go back to that neighborhood again.

"Once or twice after that I thought I caught a glimpse of his face in a dark alley, or on the back of my eyelids when I closed my eyes on a bright day. Sometimes I thought I saw the heels of his favorite sneakers disappear around a corner on a busy afternoon. That's the most that happened.

"Then one day, when I was in junior high, I unwittingly found myself in front of his house again. It had aged a great deal over the years. In fact, it was almost nothing like the house I used to visit every day as a kid. The lawn was overgrown, and the little garden path had completely disappeared under grass and mud. Ivy covered the first-floor walls, and the paint had worn off everywhere else. The porch was littered with dried leaves and branches that knocked against the rotting wood and swirled in the wind. One of the pillars on the porch had broken in half, giving the house a kind of lopsided appearance. The window to my friend's room still looked over the street like a terrible eye. I looked up, expecting to hear that old video game again, but all was quiet.

"Only a few weeks later I read in the newspaper that they had demolished the house, and were planning on building a park there. A year passed, and I was in my second year of junior high. The sun had already set, and I was passing by the park where my friend's house used to be. It was empty except for a boy of about ten swinging gently on an unoiled swing. I couldn't see his face in the dark, but something told me that this was the boy who had failed to show up to the school play he and I had organized all those years ago, and had died while crossing the street. I suppose I wanted to believe that more than anything else. I turned my back on the boy, on the park, on my friend's house forever, and moved to Kanagawa in my third year of junior high.

"Even now, sometimes, when the wind blows from the direction of Tokyo, I like to imagine that I can hear his voice, shouting 'Yes!' as he wins his video game."

An eerie silence followed Hanagata's story.

"Wow, Hanagata," said Kogure, wiping a tear. "You're an amazing raconteur."

"That wasn't a story," Hanagata insisted. "It was all true."

"But the way you said it was pretty chilling," said Mitsui. "I would rather listen to your stories than watch _When the Clock Strikes One_."

"I told you, it was not a story." Hanagata grinned in the dark. "But I suppose I chose my words well?"

"You sure did," said Maki.

"Aw, Hanagata," said Fujima as two sets of teeth chattered violently next to him. "You scared Sakuragi and Kiyota to death."

"Let's try sleeping now," said Maki, who was tired.

Then something crashed in the kitchen.

Sendoh sat up bolt upright.

"What was that?"

"We'll have to go and see," said Maki.

tbc.

* * *

A/N: As you can see, it still reads like something written by a kid, which it sort of was. Let me know if it sucks or something.

Fun fact: This fic was inspired by the fic _Movie Night_ by delusional-lady. At least the parts about it being a horror fic, about Friday nights being movie nights, and about players from all over Kanagawa gathering to watch movies.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

Kiyota swallowed.

"We? Why can't Sendoh go by himself? It's his house, after all."

Sendoh frowned.

"What if it's an intruder? Are you really going to let me go out there alone, and get stabbed or something?"

"What if it's a ghost?" said Kiyota.

"Strength in numbers," said Maki. "It's far more likely to be an intruder than a ghost."

"I'm staying right here," said Kiyota.

"So am I," said Sakuragi.

They were adamant.

"Suit yourself," said Maki, shrugging as everyone but Kiyota and Sakuragi rose to assist Sendoh and Maki. "But if I were an intruder—or a ghost—I would come down here first, because it would be just the two of you."

This had the desired effect.

"We're coming!" said Kiyota.

"Don't leave us behind!" said Sakuragi.

They were on their guard when they returned to the foyer. The lights were still out, and Sendoh covered Kogure's flashlight with a pillowcase so that it didn't alert the intruder to their presence.

"Sh, quiet!" said Sendoh in hushed tones.

"Those were Kiyota's heartbeats," said Maki, whom Kiyota was all but physically clinging on to for dear life.

"They sounded like drumbeats," said Sakuragi.

"Did not!"

"Did, too!"

They got into a skirmish.

"Shut the fuck up, you two," said Mitsui. "Or fucking get back to the living room. I am not going to be killed on account of you two."

"Idiots," said Rukawa under his breath.

The rainstorm was worse than before, which made the group a bit more optimistic that whoever or whatever had broken into Sendoh's house had not heard the disturbance caused by Kiyota and Sakuragi.

Sendoh inspected the lock on the front door.

"It's locked."

Kogure reminded him that the teenage boy's door in the movie had been locked, too.

Kiyota whimpered.

"I'm not jumping to conclusions this early," said Sendoh. "Anyhow, they didn't get in through the front door."

"Back door?" said Maki.

"It's in the kitchen. It was locked the last time I checked. As are most of the windows. I've checked them every night since my parents went out of town."

"I thought the sound we heard earlier came from the kitchen."

"That's right."

"Maybe the intruder broke in through the window or something."

They crept toward the kitchen, socked feet making hardly a sound on the wooden floor. The occasional creak of loose floorboards was drowned out by the raging thunderstorm outside.

They went into the kitchen. Sendoh shined the flashlight around the place, eyes narrowed as he looked for anything out of the ordinary.

"The windows haven't been compromised," he said. "And there's no sign of the pot or whatever that crashed."

He opened a closet next to the pantry.

"I've got a few more flashlights in here. They're not as powerful as Kogure's, but they'll do the job. We have to split up and search the house."

"That's foolhardy, isn't it?"

"Maybe," said Sendoh. "But we've got enough people. If we split up in pairs, we might be able to look out for each other. It's awkward moving around in this big a group, and I'm in half a mind to go back to bed, and lock the living room door for good measure."

"Please, no," said Kiyota. "I just want to be sure everything's fine."

"It is, don't worry," said Sendoh. "We've never had a break-in in this neighborhood."

"There's a first time for everything," said Kogure cheerfully. "Besides, this feels sort of like an adventure. I'm liking it already."

"Adventure it is, then," said Sendoh, handing out four small flashlights he had found in the storage closet next to the pantry, and handing Kogure's flashlight back to him. "I hope my house lives up to your expectations."

"I have no doubt it will," said Hanagata, who shared Kogure's morbid predilections. "It's two stories high, the lights are currently out, and it's raining outside like all Hell's broken loose."

"I suppose you're right. So how are we splitting up?"

Sendoh absently tossed his flashlight into the air like a tennis ball, and caught it as he looked from face to face.

"I guess I can go with Maki," he went on. "Kogure can go with Mitsui, Fujima can go with Jin, Kiyota can go with Hanagata, and Sakuragi can go with Rukawa."

"Who made you the boss?" said Mitsui.

"Who would you rather be with?"

"I'm fine with Kogure, but it's the principle I'm concerned about."

"I'll keep that in mind the next time we need to split up in pairs."

"I don't want to go with Rukawa," said Sakuragi.

"Look on the bright side," said Mitsui. "If it really is a ghost we're dealing with here, it'll probably get to Rukawa before it gets to you."

"I'm sticking with Rukawa," Sakuragi declared.

"Can't I go with Sendoh?" said Rukawa.

"Sure," said Sendoh. "Sakuragi is welcome to come with us, too."

Hanmichi didn't need telling.

"This is going to be a pain," muttered Maki.

Kiyota was glad he was with someone twice his height, and Jin and the others didn't care one way or another.

"Sendoh, give us the layout of your house," said Maki. "If we're going to do this, we might as well be professional about it."

"Two floors. Downstairs we have the kitchen, dining room, living room, and all that sort of thing. Oh, and also the home theater and library. Upstairs we have three bedrooms and a study. And above that is a finished attic."

"Ooh, attic," said Kogure. "I'd love to be the one to check that place out first."

"Be my guest. But I warn you, there are spiders up there."

Spiders only increased the attic's attraction in Kogure's eyes.

"Our group can deal with the rooms on the first floor," said Maki. "Kogure and Mitsui will likely spend all their time up in the attic. The rest of you can take one bedroom each, and then finish up with the study."

"Sounds good."

The upstairs groups were off, with Kogure leading them up the stairs, taking two steps at a time.

"Untold horrors in Sendoh's attic, here I come!" said Kogure loudly.

"Remember," Maki called up the stairs. "If you see anything out of the ordinary, don't hesitate to scream."

* * *

Mitsui and Kogure climbed the narrow wooden staircase up to the attic.

"Watch your step," Mitsui called up to Kogure as the latter lost his footing on the steep steps in his excitement.

Kogure laughed sheepishly.

He opened the dark door at the top of the staircase, and stepped into the attic. There was a large window on each face of the sloping roof that descended sharply to the floor on both sides of the rectangular room. Lightning illuminated the dark wood on the floor and walls.

"I don't know why Sendoh said his house only had two floors," said Mitsui. "The attic is big enough to be a floor unto itself."

"There's even a bed," said Kogure.

There was a queen-size bed at the far end of the attic. It was covered in white sheets.

"Probably for guests, if they find themselves short on rooms," Kogure went on.

Mitsui ran his fingers along the white sheets, and then quickly dusted the cobwebs off his hands.

"It doesn't look like this room has been used in a while," he said drily.

Kogure walked over to a chest of drawers, which was the same shade of cheap unpainted wood as the rest of the attic. Even more so in the dark. He started pulling open drawers and examining their contents.

"I'm pretty sure the intruder isn't hiding in one of these drawers," said Mitsui.

"But look, Mitsui. There's nothing in here but white dresses. Isn't that amazing?"

"Well, if you're into that sort of thing. But let me tell you right now that they probably belong to Sendoh's mom."

"Very funny, Mitsui. What I meant was, isn't it spooky?"

"Not at all." Mitsui put his hands in his pockets, and tried gazing out the window. All he saw were sheets of rain hitting the glass against a pitch black sky. "It would be spooky if that closet door over there suddenly shut of its own accord."

Which is exactly what happened next.

"Fucking hell," said Mitsui, taking a step back in alarm.

Kogure ran toward the closet, and pressed his ear against the wooden door.

"I can hear breathing!" he declared. Then he shined his flashlight through the half-moon shaped hole on the closet door. "I see an eye. Mitsui, it's looking right at me!"

"Get the fuck away from there, Kogure. He's probably armed and dangerous!"

Kogure was silent. Then he emitted a blood-curdling scream, as if his face had been stabbed.

"Kogure!" Mitsui ran forward, and pulled Kogure down onto the floor. He held Kogure's head in hands that were shaking violently. "Fuck, fuck, fuck, Kogure. I told you to get the fuck away from that door."

Then Kogure removed his hand from over his eye, and cast Mitsui a cheeky grin.

"Only kidding. It's just Hanagata in there. He must have followed us up to the attic."

On cue, Hanagata emerged from the closet, uncoiling his six-foot-five frame as he rose to his natural height.

Mitsui stared from Kogure to Hanagata, and then back to Kogure. Then he broke into sobs.

"Fuck, Kogure, that wasn't funny."

Kogure realized that might have gone too far.

"I'm sorry, Mitsui."

Hanagata stared awkwardly at the wall as real tears rolled down Mitsui's face.

"That wasn't fucking funny, you fucking idiot. I've seen people get badly injured in real life, and it's never funny."

Mitsui was alluding to his days of being a gangster. Adrenaline-fueled fights had taught him that violence was not nearly as heady as those who weren't used to a gangster's life often fantasized about it being. The immediate satisfaction one obtained from beating up an enemy was offset by the intense grief one felt at watching one's comrade fall. As an ex-gangster, Mitsui's feelings about violence were pretty much the same as a military veteran's feelings about war.

"Fuck, Kogure," growled Mitsui. He had stopped sobbing now. "If you do that again, I swear I'm going to fucking kill you."

Kogure laughed sheepishly.

"I won't," he promised.

Mitsui then turned to Hanagata.

"What are you doing up here anyway?" he said.

"We finished searching our bedroom and the study. We found nothing, of course. Though I could totally imagine myself spending the entire day in a study like that. Dark paneled walls, fireplace, a general air of importance amplified by a general air of spookiness. I could be a crime lord or a spy."

"Where's Kiyota?" said Mitsui, interrupting Hanagata's fantasies.

Kiyota emerged from the closet.

Mitsui and Kogure blinked.

"You were in there with Kiyota?" said Mitsui. "How the fuck did the two of you manage to fit inside that tiny closet?"

"Don't ask," Hanagata muttered.

Kiyota laughed.

"Hanagata's body is like a snake."

"I don't even want to know what that means."

"Let's go back downstairs now," said Kogure.

"Just a minute." Mitsui wiped his face on his long-sleeved shirt. "I don't want the others to see me like this."

* * *

Fujima and Jin were in the master suite, which happened to be Sendoh's parents' room.

"Well, this is awkward," said Fujima, stepping into the closet where Sendoh's mom's dresses hung.

"We don't have to go in," said Jin.

"I'm afraid we have to. If I were an intruder, I would hide in a closet like this, precisely because my pursuers would likely be too weirded out to come in."

After a few minutes of searching:

"Anything?" said Jin.

"Nope," said Fujima. "But I can't help feeling I've done something unspeakable."

"I tried telling you. It's not as if we were really expecting there to be an intruder."

"I should have listened," said Fujima as they stepped out into the hallway.

Just then they heard Kogure's blood-curdling scream from the attic.

"What was that?" said Jin.

"Sounded like Kogure."

"Sounded like he was killed."

"Shall we go and check on him?"

"If he's dead, then there's really no use going up there," said Jin.

Fujima nodded.

"I agree. We should save everyone who's still alive."

He ran down the stairs with Jin at his heels, not looking back over his shoulder lest he see a machete-wielding psycho in a hockey mask appear at the top of the staircase.

They collided with Maki at the bottom. Maki and his group had been heading upstairs to check on the others.

"Fujima—"

"Not now, Maki," said Fujima. "Kogure's dead. We heard him scream."

"See, I told you I heard someone scream," said Sakuragi to Sendoh.

"What do we do?" said Sendoh.

"We have to hide. Do you have anything we could use as a weapon?"

"Only pillows."

"That's no good, is it?"

Dull footsteps descended the stairs right above them.

"Shit," said Maki. "Quick—into the home theater."

They ran into the home theater, and hid behind the seats.

A tall silhouette appeared in the doorway shortly, lit from behind by a flash of lightning.

"Fuck," Fujima whispered next to Sendoh. "It was nice knowing you guys."

"Wait a minute," said Maki.

He had caught the gleam of glasses in the lightning, and shined his flashlight in the silhouette's face.

"Hanagata!" cried Fujima as he rose. "You scared me to death."

Mitsui and Kogure emerged from behind Hanagata, followed closely by Kiyota.

"Kogure! You're alive," said Fujima.

Mitsui glared at Kogure.

"It appears your little joke was a lot worse than I first realized."

Kogure laughed sheepishly.

"I guess I know what I'm never doing again."

"Damn straight," said Mitsui.

He related the events connected to Kogure's blood-curdling scream, leaving out his emotional episode.

"In short," he concluded, "we found absolutely nothing."

"Neither did we."

"Nor did we."

They went back out into the foyer.

"It looks like it was a false alarm," said Sendoh.

"What made that crashing sound anyway?" said Jin.

"We never found out. It was probably something in the backyard. Maybe the trashcan or something."

"We should still make sure," insisted Sakuragi.

They went into the kitchen, where Kogure shined his powerful flashlight out the window onto the back porch. Sure enough, a large metal trashcan was lying on its side, rolling back and forth in the wind, with garbage strewn across the backyard as far as the eye could see in the rain and darkness.

"Oh great," said Sendoh without enthusiasm.

He was nevertheless relieved that the mystery behind the strange crash had been solved.

The grandfather clock chimed 2 AM when they passed through the foyer once again on the way to the living room. Maybe this time they would finally get some rest.

Everyone slept soundly.

tbc.


	3. Chapter 3

A/N: For the record, there are six chapters in this story.

* * *

 **Chapter 3**

It was 9 AM when Maki awoke to the disagreeable sound of Kiyota snoring in his face. Opening his eyes, he realized that Kiyota had been clinging on to him like a pillow—for who knows how long.

He flung Kiyota's arm off him, and sat up.

"Good morning, Maki," said Fujima.

He and Hanagata were sitting on the couch, sipping a cup of tea. It looked like they had been up for a while, since they had already showered.

"How long have you been up, Fujima?" Maki rubbed the sleep out of his eyes.

"About two hours now," said Fujima.

"And you've been sitting there watching us sleep the whole time? That's a bit creepy."

Fujima laughed.

"Don't worry, we've only been here about ten minutes."

"Sendoh up yet?"

Fujima shook his head, and glanced down at Sendoh, who was asleep at his feet.

"So you just got up and made yourself tea?"

"Pretty much. I'm sure Sendoh wouldn't mind."

Sendoh stirred.

"Good morning, Sendoh," said Fujima affably.

"Yo."

Everyone was awake and refreshed by 10 AM. Except Rukawa, of course, who continued sleeping.

"You guys heading home now?" said Sendoh as they walked out into the foyer.

"Yeah," said Maki. "Wouldn't want to overstay our welcome."

Sendoh laughed.

"There's no danger of that. And it looks like the power is back on."

He flipped the switch to the foyer lights on and off to make sure.

"Cool," said Fujima, hand on the handle of the front door. "My house next week."

"Sure thing."

"See ya, Fujima."

They rest of them filed out of Sendoh's home not too long after.

Sendoh sighed, and returned to the living room to clean up and put everything back in its place.

Rukawa stirred.

"Good morning, Rukawa?"

It was a false alarm.

Sendoh put the blankets and pillows back into the storage closet upstairs, and swept popcorn off the floor and seats in the home theater, before turning his attention to the nuclear apocalypse in his backyard.

"Holy fish in a bucket," he said despondently.

Garbage bags of various colors and sizes lay gutted on the grass and among the flowers. Mud, water, and organic waste mixed together to form a gray-black sludge that oozed over every visible surface.

He grabbed a pusillanimous rake from the garden shed, and donned a pair of gardening gloves. For extra protection he tied a plastic bag over each of his shoes. Then he began working on the yard.

It was noon by the time Sendoh had raked away everything that didn't adhere inextricably to the grass and flowers. It was a clear day, and the sun heated the yard till vapors of water mixed with the odor of garbage began rising from the earth.

Sendoh retched.

"This will have to do," he said aloud to himself. "I'll let nature take care of the rest."

He replaced the rake and gloves in the shed, and put all the garbage he had managed to collect into the trashcan. Then he went inside, and took a long shower.

When he returned to the living room, he found that Rukawa had awoken. He was sitting on the floor with his back against the couch, staring absently at pictures of Sendoh as a kid on the opposite wall.

"You're awake," said Sendoh.

Rukawa turned to look at Sendoh, and nodded.

"For how long?"

"I heard you swearing outside."

Sendoh smiled sheepishly.

Rukawa showered, ate a little something out of Sendoh's fridge, and played a little one-on-one with him in the neighborhood basketball court.

A quiet week passed.

That Friday, the group met up at a bus stop close to Fujima's house. Fujima had said that he would meet them at the bus stop, since his house was some distance off from the main road and a little difficult to find in the dark, if one did not know the way already.

It turned out that Fujima's house was in the middle of nowhere, and the walk from the bus stop took nearly half an hour. It was a little brick house in the middle of a dark wood where it seemed inconceivable that it ever got to see any sunlight.

"Charming place," said Maki drily.

Fujima smiled.

"It's quiet and inexpensive."

"How often do you wake up in the morning to find dead bodies in your yard?"

"Not too often," he said.

Maki wondered if Fujima was being ironic, or if he had really awoken, at least once, in the morning to find dead bodies in his yard.

"You live here alone?"

"I do," said Fujima. "My parents live way up north, and like I said, it's inexpensive here."

"You're brave," said Sendoh.

Hanagata put an arm around Fujima's shoulder, bending awkwardly in order to make up for the 19 cm difference in height.

"That's why he's my best friend, you see," he said. "Kenji Fujima is intrepid. I have often stayed over in the summer just so I could sleep outside in that hammock over there amidst nature's horrors."

"I would love to do that sometime!" said Kogure.

Hanagata shook his head.

"I have called eternal dibs on the hammock, and it's just not the same if you're not absolutely alone."

"Do you know how old the house is?" said Mitsui.

"I think my landlord said it was built in 1876," said Fujima.

Mitsui whistled. It echoed eerily around the dark wood.

"Cool!" said Kogure. "Let's go in!"

The walls inside were all exposed brick, giving the rooms and the corridor the appearance of a dungeon. Dim lights hung at intervals from the vaulted ceiling of the narrow corridor that extended straight from the front door to a large window on the other side of the house. The corridor was lined with doors to other rooms.

"Cozy," said Sendoh, looking at his reflection in a faded old mirror next to the front door.

"A lot of the furniture and upholstery came with the house." Fujima chuckled. "According to my landlord there isn't one square foot in this house where someone hasn't died, though I suspect that's a bit of an exaggeration."

Kiyota swallowed.

"I hope we're not sleeping over."

"I'm afraid you'll have to," said Fujima. "The bus you rode here was the last bus out of this place tonight. The next bus only gets here at 6 AM."

Sakuragi felt faint. He placed a hand on the wall for support.

"Careful, Sakuragi," said Hanagata. "Someone died over there once, leaning against the wall just like that."

Sakuragi jerked his hand away from the wall as if he had received an electric shock.

Everyone laughed. Except Rukawa, of course.

"So what're we watching tonight?" said Jin.

"I thought it would only be appropriate to watch _When the Clock Strikes Two_ : the sequel to _When the Clock Strikes One_."

"Sounds like they didn't put much effort into coming up with a name," said Jin.

" _When the Clock Strikes One: Part Two: The Three_ … something or other," said Mitsui with dramatic gestures.

Kiyota whimpered.

"I hate you guys," he said.

"Not as much as I hate them," said Sakuragi.

"Don't worry," said Kogure. "We'll watch a Disney movie next week."

Mitsui retched.

"I hope you're not serious."

Kogure winked at him in response, indicating that his intention was to smuggle in a ridiculously scary movie in a Disney DVD case.

"The TV's this way," said Fujima, opening one of the doors in the main corridor.

Fujima's TV hung on the wall in his bedroom. Mitsui, Sendoh, and Jin laid siege to the bed before anyone else could, Hanagata sat down in an old rocking chair in a corner of the room, and everyone else sat down on the floor.

"Ready?" said Fujima, putting the DVD inside the DVD player.

Fujima had turned out the lights, so the only source of illumination was the light from the TV. The brick walls made the room look like the inside of a furnace—or the vestibule to Hell.

 _When the Clock Strikes Two_ picked up where the first movie had left off. The little girl who had woken up at the end of the first movie with dead glassy eyes and rotting gums was named Anna Dean. She was seven years old, and her parents were awfully vexed by her peculiar behavior. Anna had no friends, never smiled except when she was inflicting pain on other creatures, and experienced frequent seizures in the middle of the night.

Her parents took her to a Catholic priest to have her exorcized, but an invisible force lifted the old priest off the ground as he was about to finish reading an apotropaic passage from the scriptures, and pinned him up against the ceiling, as if gravity had suddenly changed direction. Anna was sitting up in the bed, and grinning maniacally up at the priest, hurling imprecations at him with a blackened tongue in an unknown language. Her voice seemed magically processed to sound like multitudes of different voices speaking in concert in varying pitches. The priest's last thought was that Anna was an inversion of all that was good in the world. The old man was no match for such extraordinary evil. He died while still held up against the ceiling, and fell to the floor only after Anna had passed out from the exertion.

When she awoke it was as if she had never been possessed. She smiled up at her mother, whose heart melted at the sight of her daughter smiling with love for the first time. She made friends, had hobbies, and led a perfectly normal life after that. Until high school. She was taking a shortcut through a cemetery late one evening after volleyball practice, when she tripped over the root of a gnarly old tree, and fell across a freshly dug grave, managing with great difficulty to avoid falling in. As she got up, she read the epitaph on the headstone: "Anna Dean: May 9, 1980 to November 23, 1996. May her tormented soul rest in peace." She gasped, for it was November 23, 1996 that day. An unnaturally strong wind caused her to lose balance, and fall straight into the grave. A storm of dried leaves and twigs was sucked into the grave after her, filling it up completely. A flash of lightning, and a slab of solid rock appeared over the grave, sealing Anna within forever. The headstone and the epitaph were gone. The grave was unmarked.

The screen went black. The words "November 23, 2007" appeared on the screen in wispy letters, like smoke curling into rings.

Anna's grave was cracked and overgrown. It was the eleventh anniversary of her death. Cracks began to appear in the grave. Then the tombstone shattered, and a cadaverous arm shot out of the earth, followed by another arm. The being in the grave hoisted itself out of the earth with creaky motions, face obscured entirely by a mass of long black hair. A breeze caused the hair to part slightly, revealing a single eye bulging out of its socket, black and glassy. The other socket was empty. The being swayed on the spot after it had climbed out of the grave. A flash of lightning; then Anna Dean was transformed into her living self, complete with the clothes she had been in when she had stumbled into her own grave. Anna smiled into the camera, transitioning into the next scene without easing up on the smile. She was on the arm of a guileless high school boy. They were on their way to prom. The nightclub they were going to was dark, which meant that the boy's death would not be discovered till the end of the evening, when Anna would be long gone, seeking out other men to kill. The movie ended with Anna standing over a man on his bed with a long knife. The shadow on the wall behind her was that of her ghost woman form.

Rukawa had fallen asleep over an hour ago. Sakuragi and Kiyota were hugging their knees and whimpering on the floor at the foot of the bed. Kogure was grinning from ear to ear, and Hanagata was so moved that he stood up and applauded. Jin smiled weakly. Maki chewed on the end of his shirt collar, and Sendoh was massaging the back of his head, since the last jump scare had caused him to start, and hit his head hard against the steel headboard of Fujima's bed.

"There's a third movie in this series, if I'm not mistaken," said Kogure.

Hanagata nodded.

"It's called _When the Clock Strikes Three_ , predictably enough. I'll try renting it next week."

Rukawa awoke when Fujima turned off the TV, and turned the lights back on.

"I liked this better than Part One," said Mitsui. "This one had a more consistent storyline, and didn't flit from one moderately scary episode to another."

"I thought this was scarier than the first movie," said Jin.

"I think a lot of people find the idea of demonic possession scarier than run-of-the-mill ghosts and ghouls in the attic," said Maki.

"I wonder what Part Three is going to be like," said Kogure. "I wonder if I can email the creators my own idea for a movie."

Maki scowled in mock displeasure.

"If they had any sense, they would pretend they never received it."

Mitsui grinned.

"Knowing you, Kogure, it would probably be filled with lame jokes and anticlimaxes."

He was still upset with Kogure for last week's practical joke at Sendoh's house.

Fujima had been awfully silent the whole time. He looked a bit green.

"What's the matter, Fujima?" said Maki. "I thought you liked scary movies."

"Don't get me wrong," said Fujima, swallowing. "I love scary movies. But I can't stand gruesome stuff like intestines spilling out and that kind of thing. That scene with the mailman made me want to throw up."

"I think a bit of fresh air will do us all some good," said Hanagata. "Let's go outside, and take a walk."

"Let's not," said Sakuragi.

"I'm not going anywhere," said Kiyota.

"What did I tell you guys last week about strength in numbers?" said Maki.

Once again Sakuragi and Kiyota found themselves inveigled into doing something they didn't want to do.

They went outside, and took in the cool evening air. The next house was half a mile away, so there wasn't any light save for the dark blue glow of the night. A strong wind rustled up some leaves on the dirt path that wound around Fujima's house and disappeared between the trees in the distance. A stray black cat darted across the path at one point, startling everyone except Rukawa, who was fond of cats. A church bell chimed in the distance. It was midnight.

"I actually don't think we should go too far," said Maki, who was beginning to have misgivings about wandering into total darkness in the middle of nowhere.

They made their way back to Fujima's house after walking a short distance between the trees.

"There are three bedrooms. We're going to have to sleep two persons per bed, I'm afraid. I'm going to lay out a spare mattress in the living room. It's twin-size, unfortunately, so it's only big enough for one person. There are two couches and a rug. We're probably going to have to draw lots to see who sleeps on the rug."

"No need for that," said Maki. "I can sleep on the rug."

"Nyahahahahaha!" said Sakuragi. "Looks like you really are an old man."

A vein throbbed in Maki's temple.

"Don't test me," said Maki. "Unless you want to spend the night alone in a closet."

Sakuragi began apologizing profusely.

"Please don't put me in a closet."

"Hanagata and I will sleep in my room. Sorry, Toru, but it's too cold outside to sleep in the hammock."

Mitsui and Kogure paired off, and took one of the guest bedrooms. Jin and Sendoh took the other.

Maki regretted having volunteered to sleep on the rug when he realized that he would end up in the same room as Sakuragi and Kiyota. He ultimately declared in a dangerous tone that Rukawa should get the mattress, so that Sakuragi and Kiyota wouldn't have to fight over it.

Rukawa's regard for Maki grew.

Fujima's house was beautiful in the morning. The red brick walls harmonized perfectly with the surrounding verdure, and there was a greater variety of birdsongs than in the middle of the city.

"I now see why you like this place so much," said Maki, waving briefly to Fujima as he and the rest of the group departed down the dirt path toward the bus stop.

Thursday rolled around sooner than anyone realized, and the group received a note from Hanagata at each of their schools.

 _Dear guys,_

 _Tomorrow we won't be watching a movie at my place. Fujima and I have got an even better idea. See you at my house at 6 PM sharp. Bring flashlights._

 _Hanagata._

Fujima reached Hanagata's house at 4 PM.

"Is everything ready, Toru?" he said when Hanagata opened the door to let him in.

"Almost. There are a few rough edges that I need to smooth out."

"Good." Fujima grinned. "I can't wait."

Most of the group arrived before six, except Rukawa, who stumbled onto Hanagata's doorstep at 6:10, having overslept.

"Everyone's here," said Sendoh. "What was it you had planned, Hanagata? And why did you ask us here so early?"

"I asked you to be here at 6 PM sharp, because we're going to this place outside the city."

"Back to Fujima's house, you mean?" said Mitsui.

Fujima frowned.

"My house is technically not outside the city. I can show it to you on a map if you like."

"We're not going to Fujima's house," said Hanagata. "All I'm going to tell you know is that it's like a campout. I have an uncle who works with historical buildings. He's the one who made this possible."

They headed down to the train station, and got off at a bare platform far outside the city limits. On the other side of the platform was an old estate with twelve-foot iron gates at its entrance.

Hanagata took out a large key from his pocket, and unlocked the gates, and followed a stone path through the garden up to the old red mansion at the center of the estate. Ivy obscured the walls of the first floor, and the large windows were dark and unwelcoming. Nevertheless it looked like the Tourism Department had been punctilious in the upkeep of the estate.

"What is this place?" said Jin.

"You'll see," said Fujima. He could hardly contain his excitement.

Hanagata pulled out a second key from his pocket, and unlocked the front door. The door swung open of its own accord.

They stepped into the building, wrinkling their noses against the smell of damp earth and age.

"This building has no power supply, so we're going to need our flashlights. Did everyone bring a flashlight like I'd asked?"

All except Rukawa had.

"Well, I suppose it wouldn't make a whole lot of difference to you anyway," said Hanagata drily.

Fujima shut the door, and locked it.

"Welcome to the Mackenzie Estate," said Hanagata. "William Mackenzie was born in 1732. That's also the year George Washington was born, by the way. He came to Japan in 1758. He was a merchant from England, and he wanted to use Japan as a trading port for opium smuggled in through China or some such thing. He was one of the richest people living here at the time, and was well respected by all. He died in 1774, leaving this massive estate to his four children. This mansion was used as a medical facility for injured soldiers during the Second World War, and is also known as the House of Death."

Shivers ran down everyone's spine as they became aware of the spookiness and historical significance of house.

"We'll be spending the night here. My uncle knows a guy in the Tourism Department who owes him a favor."

Sakuragi gasped.

"Spending the night? How could you expect me to do something as stupid as that?"

"Fucking fuck no," said Kiyota. "There is no fucking way I'm spending the night in this rundown old building."

"Sh," said Hanagata ominously. "You don't want to piss off the spirits."

Kiyota was silenced.

"Anyhow," Hanagata went on. "Follow me."

He led them through the corridor into a large central hall, and pointed his flashlight at a portrait that hung on the wall over an ornate wooden table.

"This is William Mackenzie."

The man in the portrait looked like he could have been any old Englishman. He wore a traditional eighteenth-century wig over his round face, and had a monocle over one of his beady little eyes. Hanagata then shined his flashlight on the table, where a long sword lay in an ornate gold scabbard that had turned black with age and was dented all over.

"Are there any ghosts around here?" said Kogure. "Please tell me there are ghosts around here."

"They say that at night you can hear footsteps in the attic. Your best bet would be sleep on the fourth floor tonight, if you want to catch a glimpse of whatever it is." Hanagata laughed.

"I wanna go home!" Kiyota wailed.

So far the whole thing seemed pretty exciting to all except Kiyota and Sakuragi. Kogure was taking pictures of anything that looked like it might have a spirit trapped inside it, and Rukawa and Mitsui were gazing keenly up at the faded tapestries draped over the walls. Maki was squinting up at the high ceiling, which was made entirely of wood, and carved ornately so as to resemble the ceiling of a cathedral.

"Oh, there's something else I forgot to tell you about this house," said Hanagata. There was a mischievous glint in his eye.

tbc.


	4. Chapter 4

A/N: Thanks for the review, JP.

I've decided to change the original plot up a bit, so I'm not totally sure anymore how long this is going to be.

* * *

 **Chapter 4**

Hanagata was grinning widely. He picked up a candle that was laid on its side on the console table under the portrait of William Mackenzie, and lit it. The flickering light of the candle cast waxy shadows on Hanagata's features that made him look a little evil. And William Mackenzie's rotund English face appeared like the face of the Devil himself.

"Go on, Hanagata," said Kogure. He couldn't contain himself. "Enough with the dramatic pauses!"

Hanagata laughed.

"What I'd neglected to tell you," said Hanagata, "was that the murders made a permanent impression on the house. Mind you, you won't read about this in the brochure. The Tourism Department likes to keep things like this quiet, but my uncle told me all. The house is supposed to be haunted by the ghosts of forty-three people who were murdered here, as well as the ghost of William Mackenzie himself."

Gasps all around.

"The stories are all corroborated by multiple people, each of whom was determined to be perfectly sane and in control of his wits on examination. They also checked the place for carbon monoxide leaks, which is what the majority of specters and apparitions are attributable to, and found nothing."

Skeletons rattled to life nearby. It was Sakuragi and Kiyota.

"Are you sure you're not making this up?" said Sendoh.

Hanagata looked grave.

"I would never lie about these things."

Fujima snorted.

"Fine, but I'm not lying now," said Hanagata. "I could show you what Mackenzie's children had to say about this place after their father died. It turns out they were avaricious young people who arranged to have their father murdered in order to inherit the estate. William Mackenzie cursed all four of his children in his dying breath, and said that he would never leave the house till the earth itself was destroyed. All four children died perfectly natural and mysterious deaths within the next few months, and all subsequent owners up until the 1960s died mysteriously within a short time of moving in."

"What happened in the 1960s?" said Jin.

"The Tourism Department acquired the building, and used it only for tourism purposes. William Mackenzie no doubt found this arrangement favorable, and ceased killing people."

"And the forty-three murders?" said Mitsui.

"Hang on a minute," said Hanagata. He pulled out a sheaf of paper from the inside pocket of his jacket, and began leafing through it. "I've done my research. Twenty-five of them were previous owners. A dozen of them were injured soldiers who were murdered in the middle of the night by bandits during the Second World War. Three were domestic staff. And three were tourists like you and me."

Kiyota swallowed.

"I thought you said he didn't kill tourists."

"He didn't. Like I said, these were legitimate murders not directly attributable to preternatural causes. One of the three tourists who stayed back illegally after the late-night tour went crazy, and shot his friends before killing himself. It was believed that they had disrespected the property in some way."

Sendoh laughed nervously.

"I hope no one's brought a gun."

"The spirits always find a way," said Kogure cheerfully. He nodded deferentially in the direction of William Mackenzie's portrait, as if having a private moment with that great patriarch.

"And I'm only talking about murders," Hanagata went on. "There were even more mysterious deaths. This is an entry from the diary of Mackenzie's oldest son, written shortly before he died himself: _I feel betrayed. It is as though the house has turned against me. Not a moment goes by when I am not assailed by the feeling that I am being watched. My misgivings are not unfounded, either. The housekeeper and a maid were found dead in the kitchen shortly after my father's death. There were no external wounds on their bodies, but they saw during the autopsy that all their major organs had been mutilated as with a knife. Shortly afterwards the gardener was beheaded in the garden in the middle of the day. The maid who witnessed it swore that his head fell off as if it had never been attached to his body. She lost her sanity to hysteria after that, and had to be discharged. Finally, my wife died this morning. She had always been healthy and full of life. I fear I shall be next._ "

A sudden gust of wind extinguished the candle.

Kogure almost jumped up and down in excitement, and Sakuragi and Kiyota were white as sheets.

"What was that?" said Maki.

Hanagata relit the candle, and frowned.

"I thought you'd have guessed. After what I told you about the house and all. Anyway, let me show you where we're sleeping."

"Sleeping?" said Mitsui. "The fucking candle blew out on its own. The doors are shut, and there are no windows in this hallway. How the fuck can you think of sleeping?"

"I agree," said Kogure cheerfully. "How can you think of sleeping when we haven't even begun to experience the horrors of this place?"

"Think of the kids, Fujima, goddamn it," said Maki, indicating Sakuragi and Kiyota, not without irony.

Sakuragi's face was dark.

"I'm an amazing fighter," he said gravely. "Mitchy will remember how I messed up his face. But I don't fuck with the spirits."

"Relax, Sakuragi," said Sendoh. "I'm sure there's a perfectly reasonable explanation behind all this. No one has to fuck with anyone."

"On the contrary," said Kogure, "I'm pretty sure there isn't a reasonable explanation. I mean, think about it. Did any of you so much as feel a breeze when the candle went out? And don't tell me it escaped your notice that William Mackenzie's eyes had moved when Hanagata relit the candle."

Kogure shined his trusty flashlight at William Mackenzie's austere English face, and everyone gasped.

"You see," said Kogure, "when we came in, Mackenzie's eyes were directed straight ahead. Now they're glaring straight down at us."

Hanagata gave a small cough.

"As I was saying, this place is definitely haunted."

"Quit fucking with us," growled Mitsui. "You think I want to get my head lopped off in the middle of the night? I've seen enough of this rundown old shithole of a house."

Hanagata winced.

"Mitsui, I must ask you not to insult the spirits—"

"There are no fucking spirits."

"How safe is it, really?" said Sendoh. "Spending the night here, I mean."

"Look, guys," said Fujima. "You've got to believe that this isn't the first time Hanagata and I have spent the night here. We've been here dozens of times, and it's always been more or less peaceful. Except for the occasional extrasensory disturbance, the random specter that appears when you're least expecting it—that sort of minor thing. The spirits are done killing people. They just want to be left alone. There's no reason the living and the dead can't live together in peace."

"Oh yes there is," said Mitsui. "The living and the dead can't fucking live in peace, because the living are fucking alive and the dead are fucking dead."

Kogure shook his head.

"Haven't you learnt anything, Mitsui? Why do you think we've been watching _When the Clock Strikes One_ these past few weeks? It's to get us comfortable with the idea that the spirits are walking among us all the time. It's time you got past your denial."

Mitsui looked like he wanted to wring Kogure's neck.

Rukawa placed an unexpected hand on his shoulder to calm him down.

"What are you doing, Rukawa? Get the fuck off me."

"Get ahold of yourself," he said. "You don't want to anger the spirits any more than you already have."

Kogure cast a fatherly look at Rukawa.

"All this time you've been a believer, huh?"

Rukawa blinked.

"Not really," he said. "I just want to scare these two."

He jerked his thumb in the direction of Sakuragi and Kiyota, who narrowed their eyes at him.

Sendoh laughed.

"Rukawa, you fucking piece of shit," said Sakuragi.

"You fucking piece of shit."

"No, you fucking piece of shit," said Kiyota.

"No, you—"

"Knock it off," said Maki. "We'll spend the night here. If the spirits spared Fujima's annoying ass, then I wouldn't worry too much about the rest of us."

"Yeah, well, fuck you," said Fujima.

"Now, now, Kenji," said Hanagata. "Be nice."

Fujima took a minute to recompose himself.

"Enough swearing and shit," he said. "There's a restaurant down the street from here that closes in less than an hour. We should head there, if we want to eat anything tonight."

The restaurant was dark and shabby, and the group suspected that it did not exactly pass inspection, but the food was nevertheless delicious. The owner was an old man who stooped so low that a tap on the shoulder could have knocked him over.

"We don't get visitors very often this time of the year," said the owner solemnly. His eyes were glassy with cataract, and he spoke in a smoker's raspy voice. "It's nice to see that young people are still taking interest in our history."

"How long have you owned this place?" said Fujima, who knew the answer.

"Nine generations," said the old man reverently. "My family was here when the Old Master's curse befell the estate. My forefathers watched as the bodies were carried out of the gates. I was a young man myself when all those brave soldiers were murdered in their sleep during the War. Such a tragedy. I fear the spirits don't like change. That is the only reason I still live and work here. I fear that if I permit anything more to change, the spirits' anger will know no bounds."

The sun had set by the time they walked back up the stone pathway to the mansion. The edifice looked stark and monstrous in the dark.

"Let me take you guys upstairs," said Hanagata, walking up a narrow wooden staircase just off the hall with William Mackenzie's portrait. The stairwell smelt damp and musty, and the wooden steps creaked dangerously under their feet.

Soon they reached the second floor, which was just a narrow corridor lined with doors.

"These are the bedrooms," said Hanagata. "They're not worth looking at. Most of the old furniture was pawned off over the ages, or otherwise crumbled with age."

There was a window at one end of the corridor. A thin white curtain hung over it, billowing silently in the wind.

Sendoh stared at it while Hanagata talked about the layout of the second floor. The curtain looked so peaceful. He was beginning to lose track of himself when his entire being was jolted back to life with a start.

"What the fuck?"

"What is it, Sendoh?"

"I swear I saw a face appear on that curtain. It lasted a split second, but there was no mistaking it. It looked like someone was pressing his face against the curtain from the other side."

"Looks like you need sleep," said Maki.

Sendoh was less sure of himself.

"Maybe you're right."

Hanagata led them around the corner at the other end of the corridor. A set of steps led down to a landing halfway between the first and the second floors. A set of double doors at the end of the landing opened into what appeared to be a living room. It was unfurnished, but there was an fireplace in the wall framed by an ornate mantelpiece.

"This used to be the guest lounge. William Mackenzie entertained important people from England here."

Another set of steps on the other side of the guest lounge led back downstairs to the first floor.

"This over here," said Hanagata, pushing open a set of heavy double doors with some effort, "is the ballroom."

The ballroom was a spacious room whose ceiling was two stories high. There were tall windows at intervals that reached from floor to ceiling, with columns in the Greek style set between windows. But for the walls and windows the place might have looked like the Parthenon from outside. A plaster-of-Paris octagon on the ceiling marked the spot where a crystal chandelier must have once hung.

"This must have been the shit, huh?" said Mitsui.

"It definitely was," said Hanagata.

"Now let's go up to the third floor," said Hanagata.

"What?" said Kiyota. "We were just upstairs. Why did we come downstairs if we were going back upstairs again?"

Hanagata straightened his glasses.

"There is a method to these things," he said with some asperity. "A sequence. A proper order."

They passed under the staircase they had descended, through a narrow passageway, through the hall with William Mackenzie's portrait, and then out into the entrance hall, where they ascended the marble grand staircase up to the third floor.

There was only one bedroom on the third floor.

"This was William Mackenzie's bedroom," said Hanagata.

It was huge. There were windows overlooking each of the four sides of the estate, and a single four-poster bed pushed up against the wall with a second portrait of William Mackenzie right above it. He looked older in this portrait, and was without wig. His hair was black, and combed back so that it stuck fast to his scalp. He looked less silly without his wig, and his austere unsmiling face looked malevolent rather than pompous. The eyes were sharp and bright, bulging out from their sunken sockets like the eyes of a dead thing.

Sendoh swallowed.

"I'd hate to have been his wife," he said, making an attempt at humor. "You know—to have to sleep under that hideous painting. It must have been hard being her."

Hanagata adjusted his glasses.

"We're about to find out," said Hanagata. "You see, we're going to sleep here tonight."

Several voices immediately went up in protest.

"You must be out of your goddamn mind," said Sakuragi.

"This isn't fucking funny," said Kiyota.

"I don't see any beds," said Mitsui. "Other than that big old one over there."

"We're sleeping on the floor," said Hanagata.

Rukawa had his reservations about sleeping in a purportedly haunted place, but then again, sleep was good. The pros definitely outweighed the cons in his eyes.

"Good night," he said, and slumped down onto the old rug, throwing a cloud of dust into the air.

"Er, Rukawa," said Hanagata. "My uncle arranged for sleeping bags. They're in that closet over there."

Rukawa got up wordlessly, got himself a sleeping bag, and fell asleep in it.

Sendoh had to pull Rukawa's sleeping bag to the side to make room for the others.

"Good fucking night," said Kiyota. He felt safe sleeping between Maki and Sakuragi. Maki was strong and would protect Kiyota from harm; Sakuragi was stupid, and would get eaten first.

Sakuragi thought the same about Kiyota.

"Good night," said Fujima.

"Sleep tight," said Hanagata.

"Hope we get to see some ghosts tonight!" said Kogure.

"You can't say 'night' twice, Kogure," said Mitsui. "That's not a valid rhyme."

"Yeah, yeah," said Kogure. "Ghosts are less picky about rhymes than humans."

"Guys, can we get some quiet, please?" said Maki.

"Sorry."

"One more thing," said Fujima, sitting up. "You might hear some strange noises in the middle of the night, or see apparitions, but they won't harm you in any way. At least, I don't think they will."

"Looks like Sakuragi and Kiyota are out," said Maki. "Can't tell if they're asleep or unconscious."

By and by everyone fell asleep.

The moon in the course of its celestial journey illuminated the room differently as the hours passed. Around 2:30 AM it had sunk partially behind the tall trees around the boundary of the estate. The floor of the bedroom was plunged into darkness. The only thing that was illuminated was the wall with William Mackenzie's portrait. The moonlight fell on his eyes, which seemed to stare hungrily down at the slumbering intruders on the floor.

tbc.

* * *

A/N: I will tell you right now that my knowledge of Japan's history is questionable at best (even worse back in 2008), so try not to read the some of the things that you will have come across in the preceding chapter with the historian's critical eye. In any case, the stuff about opium was entirely made up.


	5. Chapter 5

A/N: Thanks for the review, JP.

Also I've changed the names to last names for everyone, even in the preceding chapters. No point sticking to the naming conventions of the English dub, if I'm editing this thing anyway.

* * *

 **Chapter 5**

Kiyota dreamt that a tremendous earthquake shook the Mackenzie Estate to its foundations. A fissure appeared in the earth, and magma bubbled up to the surface. Pretty soon all that was left of the mansion were a few bare brick walls floating in the lava like little islands. It must be the end times, Kiyota thought, jumping from one brick-wall island to another, just before it tilted downwards and sank into the lava. At one point William Mackenzie's portrait floated serenely past him. Something seemed off about the old Englishman. Then Kiyota realized that Mackenzie was wearing Hanagata's glasses in the portrait instead of his usual stolid monocle. He was wondering just what the fuck Mackenzie should be doing in Hanagata's glasses, when the lava in front of him began to bulge out, like a bubble. The bubble grew bigger and bigger until it resembled a tidal wave preparing to come crashing down on Kiyota. Then out of the lava emerged eight large black legs. Some sort of lava spider, it transpired, when the lava bubble burst, and the spider became visible in its entirety. Its eyes burned like coals in a fire, and lava dripped from its white-hot fangs.

Kiyota awoke in a cold sweat. He sat up in his sleeping bag, breathing heavily for a few minutes. The hair on his arms stood on end, and he shivered.

"It was just a dream," he said aloud in relief when he realized where he was.

He felt something crawl up his arm. In the dim twilight he saw that it was a large spider.

"What the fuck?" He shrieked. "Get off, get off, get off!"

He managed to shake the spider off, and watched as it scurried away into the darkness.

He climbed out of his sleeping bag, and stood in front of the window. The edges of the panes had frosted over during the night, and the ice was beginning to melt into droplets of water that rolled down the glass like tears. The sky outside was dark, but not black. The tall trees on the border of the estate looked black against the crepuscular sky—like a craggy mountain range. The sun would rise in an hour or two, probably.

Kiyota was actually beginning to enjoy the picturesque peacefulness of this place—away from the city crowds, in Nature's lap. He might even be tempted to take a walk around the estate later in the morning, when there was more light.

He turned around, and leant against the wall, resting his elbows on the window sill. His shrieks had not woken anyone up. Fujima groaned and turned in his sleeping bag, but became still as a log right after. Sakuragi, he was pleased to see, appeared to be having a nightmare of some sort, too.

Then something compelled him to look up at the bedroom door, just beyond where everyone was sleeping. It was too dark to say for sure, but Kiyota was certain that he could make out the silhouette of a person in the doorway. He could see shoulders and the outline of a head, a shade darker than the surrounding blackness. It was still as death.

Kiyota swallowed. He became seized by a nameless terror. He didn't have to look down at the sleeping forms in front of him to know that it was not one of the others. He could feel a foreign presence in the room, and was certain from the moment he laid eyes on the silhouette that it wasn't human. He knew it the way you know things that you can't explain—the way a deer can tell if there's a tiger lurking in the tall grass.

He felt cold. His fingers and toes became numb with cold, and his breathing became labored. He didn't know if it was because his clothes were still damp with sweat, but he began shivering, and his teeth chattered softly—and not even from fear. His heart began racing, and beads of sweat formed on his forehead. He wanted to close his eyes, to look away from the thing in the doorway, to scream—but none of his muscles seemed to respond to his will. It was as if the _thing_ that had stepped across into this world had him pinned against the wall with an unknown and otherworldly force, sucking the life out of him with its insidious presence. His vision was reduced to pinpricks, and was beginning to turn black at the periphery.

Just when he felt that he was about to depart this world, life surged back into his body, and he gasped for air. He fell to the floor, panting, and stared down at the dirty old rug at the foot of the great bed. When he looked up at the doorway again, the thing was gone. It was still pitch-dark in the hallway outside, but he knew that the presence was gone.

He passed out on the rug.

* * *

The morning sun shone brightly in through the windows in Mackenzie's bedroom when the first people in the group began to awake. It was difficult to stay asleep for long when the sun shone right in your face—some would say impossible—but "impossible" was apparently not a word that could be found in Rukawa's dictionary.

"What's up with Kiyota?" said Maki, nudging Kiyota's limp body by the window with a foot.

Sakuragi laughed.

"It seems the wild monkey can only sleep in his natural habitat."

"Monkeys sleep in trees," said Mitsui, yawning and stretching his arms.

Sakuragi scowled at him.

"You know what I meant, Mitchy," he said. "The rest of us slept in sleeping bags like humans, but that was too _civilized_ for the wild monkey."

"We'll be heading out soon," said Fujima, shuffling over to the bathroom to freshen up. The creak of ancient faucets was heard within.

Kiyota finally began to stir at the sound of the morning chatter around him. He groaned as he slowly opened his eyes.

"Where am I?"

He became aware of a presence above him, and rolled onto his back at lightning speed, bracing himself for another supernatural attack. He heaved a sigh of relief when he saw that it was only Maki.

"What's the matter, Kiyota?" said Maki. "You don't look too well."

Kiyota sat up with some effort, and swallowed. To his dismay he realized that he had a sore throat.

"Something… something happened last night," he said gravely.

Kogure was all ears. He bounded over to them like a scientist whose theories were about to be vindicated.

"What happened? Did you see a ghost?"

Kiyota told them what he remembered. How he woke up from a nightmare, walked up to the window, and then… saw _it_.

He closed his eyes and shivered. The memory of what it felt like to be in the presence of that _thing_ was still fresh in his mind. It was like nothing he had ever felt or experienced before.

Hanagata had walked up to them in the middle of Kiyota's story. He looked grave.

"You say you saw a shadowy figure of some sort?"

"Just a silhouette. In that doorway," said Kiyota, gesturing to the doorway with a jerk of his head. "Why? Do you know what it was?"

Hanagata frowned.

"Nothing I've heard of or read about before," he said. "As far as I know the only supernatural experiences people have had in this house have been doors shutting all by themselves, the subdued sound of whispering in the walls, and the occasional sight of people out of the corner of your eye. The murders were all caused by forces that did not physically manifest. As in, the only proof of their presence is the sheer improbability of that many people falling sick and dying or going crazy and killing each other for no reason. I don't know that there has ever been a demonic presence in this house."

"So what you're saying is that you have no fucking clue what's going on here?" said Kiyota, his temper rising.

"Are you sure you didn't just imagine it?"

"I know what I saw," Kiyota yelled.

"Calm down, Kiyota," said Maki, placing both hands on Kiyota's shoulders. "We'll be out of this place soon. Now why don't you go and freshen up?"

Kiyota shuffled off wordlessly toward the bathroom once Fujima emerged, drying his hair with a towel.

"What about that gardener who was decapitated?" said Kogure. "Wouldn't you say that was caused by demonic forces?"

"Probably," said Hanagata. "But all that was supposed to have ended after the Tourism Department took over the place. And for all you know, the maid might not have been a very reliable witness."

"Wild monkey's probably not a reliable witness, either," said Mitsui, hands in his pockets.

Sakuragi was thrilled that Mitsui had taken to using that wild animal's proper name.

"Be that as it may, I prefer to give him the benefit of the doubt," said Maki. "Now let's get out of here."

"We can leave Rukawa behind," said Sakuragi, staring gleefully down at Rukawa's sleeping from, still zipped up in his sleeping bag. "I'm sure the spirit was awfully disappointed that it didn't get to eat the wild monkey, so it's only polite to let it have Rukawa."

Rukawa heard that. It seemed that the sound of Sakuragi's laughter was too much even for him. A hand shot out from inside the sleeping bag, and caught hold of Sakuragi by the ankle.

Sakuragi scarcely knew what was going on when he fell face-first onto the floor.

"Rukawa, you dirty fox!"

They were brawling for a full five minutes, when Sendoh finally took it upon himself to break up the fight.

"That was quite something," said Jin once they were on the train back home.

"Wasn't it?" Fujima smiled. "I was hoping when the candle blew out that we'd get to see something. Maybe William Mackenzie himself. But alas, we weren't so lucky."

"Disappointing indeed," said Hanagata.

Kiyota snorted mirthlessly.

"As someone who has recently had a close brush with death, I can tell you that 'lucky' is the farthest thing from what I feel. Fucking amateurs."

The only other passengers in the car were a few elderly commuters, who cast censorious looks at Kiyota.

The sun was high in the sky when they reached the city, and the group decided to spend an hour or two at the park to eat some ice cream and cool off.

Kiyota leant against a tree some distance apart, and stared darkly at the rest of the group. He thrust his hands deep into his pockets as he grappled with his emotions.

"Fucking Hanagata, thinking I made it all up," he muttered.

Then he suddenly became aware that something was off—that something was not as it should be.

"Uh, guys," said Kiyota, walking up to the rest of the group. The defiant edge to his voice was gone. "I think I left my house keys at the mansion."

Mitsui groaned.

"Don't you have a spare?"

Kiyota shook his head.

"I guess you'll have to go back and get them now. Before it gets dark," said Fujima. "Hanagata and I have an interview with the Tokyo University basketball coach this afternoon, so we won't be able to go with you. We're applying for a basketball scholarship."

Maki groaned.

"So am I."

"I can give you the keys," said Hanagata, handing Kiyota the keys to the mansion. "Be sure to bring them back, because I need to hand them over to my uncle today."

Jin apparently had a cousin's wedding to attend.

"I'm not going with you," said Mitsui flat out.

"I _really_ wish I could go," said Kogure. "But Akagi and I are meeting up to study for Monday's exam. Mitsui can join us, too, if he likes."

Mitsui shook his head.

"I couldn't study one more minute."

Kiyota was beginning to think that fate had it in for him, when Sendoh's voice pierced through the rainclouds like a ray of sunshine.

"I can go with you," said Sendoh. "I have nothing better to do today."

Rukawa coughed softly behind him.

"We were going to play one-on-one this afternoon."

"You can come along, too," said Sendoh. "We'll get off near Ryonan on the way back, and head to the basketball court near my house."

Rukawa was not thrilled at the thought of traveling with Kiyota, but decided that he was up for it, if it meant that he would be able to keep Sendoh from changing his mind about playing basketball with him later on.

They waved their goodbyes solemnly to the rest of the group as they headed back to the train station.

"The keys had better be there."

"Shut up, Rukawa."

tbc.

* * *

A/N: Like I said, this is a departure from the original plot (which sucked - trust me), so a lot of this chapter was written from scratch. The part after they woke up in the morning was part of the original Chapter 4, modified slightly to fit this new plot.

(Trivia: It was originally Sendoh who left his keys at the mansion. When I was editing the story, I changed it to Sakuragi. Now, after departing from the original plot, I changed it to Kiyota.)


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6**

Kiyota was tense throughout the train ride to the Mackenzie Estate. It had been warm and sunny not an hour ago, but clouds had suddenly gathered in the sky, as if to herald unfortunate things. Kiyota was not sure he could handle another paranormal episode.

"Do you have any idea where you might have lost your keys?" said Sendoh as the train pulled into the stark old station outside the estate.

Kiyota, Sendoh, and Rukawa were the only passengers in the car this time, and there was not a soul on the platform when they got off the train. It was a windy afternoon, and the tall trees shielding the mansion from the eyes of outsiders swayed noisily, showering the earth below with dried leaves.

"I have no idea," said Kiyota, swallowing as he paused at the gates, and looked up at the mansion. Its brick-red edifice, blackened by age and rain, looked like something that had risen out of the Earth's mantle of its own accord. That large window on the third floor was probably the one he had stood in front of early that morning—where he had turned around to see…

Kiyota shook his head. He had to stop thinking about that experience, or he would never go back to normal. At any rate, a ghost or demon or whatever would have to be pretty fucking stupid to try anything funny in broad daylight.

He flung wide the gates with relative intrepidity, surprising Sendoh, and even Rukawa.

"O-okay then," said Sendoh. "Let's do this."

The entrance hall of the mansion looked a lot bigger than when they had been part of a larger group, and their voices seemed to echo off the walls and high ceiling with a greater hollowness than before.

"Huh?"

Sendoh's eyes shot up to the second floor at the top of the grand staircase, where he could have sworn he saw a woman leaning over the balustrade, calmly surveying their unwelcome progress through the entrance hall. But when he looked up, there was nobody there.

"Must be a trick of the light," he said to himself. "Kiyota? Where are you going? I thought we were heading upstairs."

Kiyota had walked ahead of them, past the staircase, and into the hall that enshrined William Mackenzie's bewigged portraiture.

Sendoh followed him in long strides, and found Kiyota standing right under the portrait, staring down at the old sword in its dented old scabbard. Before he could comprehend what was going on, Kiyota lifted the sword off the console table—which could not have been an easy thing to do, given its size—unsheathed it noisily, and slashed William Mackenzie's portrait across the middle. A samurai couldn't have given that hapless Englishman a more professional dissection.

"Kiyota, what are you doing?" Sendoh gasped, not sure if he should approach someone who was holding a five-foot broadsword in one hand, and apparently knew how to use it.

Then Kiyota suddenly froze. The sword fell out of his hand, and landed noisily on the stone floor, as if he had suddenly lost the ability to wield it. He turned around, and looked at Sendoh. His eyes were wide, and he looked pale—as if all the blood had drained out of his face.

"What… what happened?"

Sendoh's eyes were wide with shock. Even Rukawa, who normally did not condescend to acknowledge things that went on around him, was looking at Kiyota with the sort of look on his face that he normally reserved for basketball players who had surpassed his expectations.

Kiyota turned around to look at William Mackenzie's portrait, and gasped when he saw the gash in the canvas.

"How did this happen?"

He looked down at the sword at his feet.

"Did I… do that?"

Sendoh nodded slowly.

"Um," he said at length. "We've got to get you out of here."

"But my keys—"

"We'll grab them, and get the fuck out of here. Something's not right about this place."

"And now it looks like you disrespected McDonald."

"It's Mackenzie, Rukawa."

"H'm?"

They went out into the entrance hall with an air of purpose, and had scarcely begun ascending the marble grand staircase, when a door swung shut somewhere above them, ringing out in the atrium like a gunshot.

"What the actual fuck?"

Then another door. Then another. At least a dozen doors on the second floor had swung shut in this manner by the time the three of them reached the top of the grand staircase. The doors to all the bedrooms were shut as before, so whatever possessed the spirits to make their presence known seemed to have passed for now.

"It might have just been the wind," said Sendoh.

Then something caught his eye.

"That window," he said sharply, looking straight down the second-floor corridor at the window at the other end. "The curtain's gone."

The white curtain that had billowed peacefully over the window the previous night was no longer there.

"Maybe they decided that the place needed a makeover?" he said with a weak laugh.

"Not funny," said Kiyota. "Now let's go find my keys."

"I wonder if there's some kind of special provision in the spirit world that lets them show up at odd hours like this," Sendoh said to Rukawa as they ascended a second staircase to the third floor.

Rukawa shrugged.

Kiyota, as before, walked ahead of them with surprising energy. Multiple encounters with things not of this world seemed to have given him a keen insight into the habits of Our Undead Brethren, and he seemed to know exactly what to do.

"We're here," said Kiyota, stopping at the doorway to Mackenzie's bedroom, unwilling to step inside.

"Are we going in?"

Sendoh attempted to push past Kiyota into the bedroom, but Kiyota blocked the doorway with his arm.

"Something doesn't feel right," he said. "I don't think we should go in."

"But your keys," Sendoh protested. "I can see them on the rug over there."

"I do, too," said Kiyota gravely. "But something tells me we should not go in there."

"You should tell them that we're on a schedule here," Sendoh persisted. "We mean no harm. We're just here to grab a miserable set of keys, and then we'll be off. For good."

"Tch," said Kiyota with contempt. "I don't get to speak to whatever it is that's trying to communicate with me. I just listen."

A crash.

The thread holding Mackenzie's second portrait up on the wall had apparently snapped, and the portrait had fallen straight down onto the headboard of the four-poster bed underneath. It swung slowly around its base, and fell facedown with a soft thud onto the bed.

"Okay," said Sendoh. "That was weird. So weird, in fact, that I'm inclined to believe that this has all just been a string of crazy coincidences. I mean, I thought ghosts were supposed to be subtler than that."

"Apparently not," said Rukawa simply. "Let's get the keys, and leave."

Kiyota held his breath for a few moments.

"Okay," he said finally, releasing his breath. "I think it's safe to go in now."

He walked into the bedroom, and bent down to pick up the keys.

"There, see," said Sendoh. "That wasn't so bad. Now let's get the fuck out of here."

"Wait," said Kiyota. He strode up to the bed, and without warning punched a hole through the back of William Mackenzie's portrait.

"Sometimes I think I don't really know you," said Sendoh as they walked out of the bedroom.

To their relief, they managed to make it out of the mansion in one piece. The next train wouldn't be here for twenty minutes, so they sat down on a concrete bench on one end of the platform.

"Do you think it was a ghost?" said Sendoh, the spikes in hair swaying in the wind like the great trees above.

"I don't know." Kiyota frowned. "It sure as hell felt like it."

"Maybe it's just the stress of being in a place like this," said Sendoh. "A place that has seen much violence and many tragedies over the ages. Hanagata's stories no doubt primed you for such experiences, and your imagination took over from there."

"I don't know," Kiyota repeated. Earlier today he was prepared to sock Hanagata in the face for doubting him when he had insisted that he had seen a ghost. Now he wasn't sure that he hadn't simply been hallucinating, or hadn't simply let his imagination get the better of him when he came into the grip of a real but mundane bout of illness. "This place is fucked up."

"I am inclined to agree," said Sendoh. "I don't know what Hanagata wanted to prove by bringing us here. I would much rather have spent the evening at his house, watching _When the Clock Strikes Three_ , or even a romantic comedy."

The train arrived before long, and they spent a quiet hour on board, before they arrived at Ryonan Station.

"Hey look, it's Hanagata," said Sendoh, glancing out the window.

All three of them disembarked.

"I was hoping you'd be on this train," said Hanagata. "How did it go? Did you find your keys?"

Kiyota nodded, and handed the keys to the Mackenzie Estate back to Hanagata.

"I think we forgot to lock the house, though," said Sendoh sheepishly.

"W-what?" Hanagata's jaw dropped. "Now I'll have to go back again, and lock the place up."

"How did your interview go?"

Hanagata sighed in exasperation.

"They picked Maki over Fujima, and kind of laughed me out of the room."

"Harsh."

"Yes," said Hanagata darkly, thrusting his hands, with the keys, into his pockets.

Then Sendoh related to him their weird experience from earlier.

"W-what?" said Hangata, jaw dropping all over again. "You're saying both portraits are ruined?"

He covered his face with his hands, and groaned.

"My uncle's going to kill me, and even if he doesn't, I'm pretty sure the Tourism Department is going to hand me a lifelong ban for this."

"It was a shithole anyway," said Sendoh cheerfully.

"Okay, okay," said Hanagata, composing himself with some effort as they walked down toward the park with the basketball court. "I can get some tape, a ball of thread, and… Who am I kidding? I'm never going to be able to fix this."

"If you ask me," said Kiyota. "I think the old geezer was asking for it."

"How do you mean?" said Hanagata when he realized that Kiyota wasn't attempting to be a smartass.

"Well," Kiyota began. "Suppose I accept that ghosts are real—and I know I may have said some things in the past about supernatural experiences—but suppose I accept that ghosts are real, and suppose I was the ghost of William Mackenzie. Now I'm lying there on my deathbed, surrounded by my four treacherous children, who conspired to kill me. And I tell them, 'I'm never going to forgive your good-for-nothing asses. I'm going to linger on in this place after I die, and make you regret doing this to me.' Then I die, and I exact revenge on my children, kill a few other people on the side to let everyone know that I'm not kidding around—and then what? I realize that sticking around after I've died was a pretty fucking stupid thing to do. I'm stuck in this shitty old house that's crumbling all around me, while my wife and everyone I've ever known and loved are having a blast in the afterlife. I want to be in the afterlife, too. So I wait until a group of dumb fucking high school basketball players decides to spend the night in my house, steal the keys out one of their pockets, and then force them to come back. Then I make the one whose keys I stole destroy both my portraits, which are presumably the only things tying me down to this world—not to mention shitty works of art—and then I float up to the afterlife, a happy man."

A minute of silence.

"Wow, Kiyota," said Hanagata. He was genuinely impressed. "I am genuinely impressed. William Mackenzie must have been really fond of those portraits, if they were what was preventing his passage into the afterlife."

Kiyota shrugged.

"It's just an idea."

They entered the park. The sound of a basketball being bounced and the squeak of basketball shoes issued from the direction of the basketball court.

"Tch," said Rukawa in disappointment. "Looks like someone's already there."

When the court came into view, they saw that it was only Mitsui and Sakuragi playing one-on-one (or at least attempting to, since Mitsui was running rings around the redhead), while the rest of the group watched from the side.

"Toru," Fujima called out cheerfully when he saw his teammate walk in through the chain-link gate on the other side of the court. "And Sendoh and Kiyota and Rukawa."

Fujima was conspicuously standing some distance apart from Maki.

"Where's Kogure?" said Sendoh.

"He's still studying," said Mitsui, stealing the ball from Sakuragi with minimal effort, and scoring a layup shot.

Sakuragi let out a cry of consternation.

Hanagata then proceeded to tell the rest of the group of the events at the estate.

Sakuragi stopped dribbling, and let the ball roll off to the side of the court, where Rukawa promptly picked it up, and commenced playing one-on-one with Sendoh.

"You mean the wild monkey came face-to-face with a ghost, and it didn't eat him?"

Sakuragi was beginning to have serious doubts whether the world was truly a just place.

"You know what?" said Kiyota suddenly. "I don't really think I'm scared of ghosts anymore."

"Oh?" said Hanagata, a smile playing on his lips.

"I think I want to give _When the Clock Strikes One_ a second chance," Kiyota went on. "After having paranormal experiences in real life, what could a movie possibly do to me?"

Maki ruffled his hair.

"Spoken like a true member of the Kainan basketball team."

Mitsui shook his head.

"Ghosts aren't real," he muttered.

Sakuragi clenched his teeth. He would be damned, if he let the wild monkey make him look stupid.

"Oh yeah? I was never scared." He laughed loudly. "I was only playing along, because you were the only one who looked like he was going to wet his pants whenever we watched a movie. The Genius felt sorry for you, that's all."

Kiyota ground his teeth.

"Oh yeah? Why don't you prove it, then? Why don't we watch _When the Clock Strikes Three_ tonight, and see how fearless you are?"

"That's actually not a bad idea," said Hanagata. "It's only Saturday, after all. We can watch _When the Clock Strikes Three_ at my place tonight."

"I'll text Kogure, and ask him to rent the DVD," said Mitsui, pulling out his cell phone.

It was 7 PM by the time they reached Hanagata's house. Kogure was standing outside.

"I found it," he said, holding up the DVD triumphantly.

 _When the Clock Strikes Three_ was the final installment in the series. It picked up where the previous movie left off. Anna Dean was bound to a large wooden cross with leather belts, and was wheeled into an old cemetery of some sort. A ring of people in black-hooded robes stood around a stone shrine, holding candles, and muttering incantations under their breaths.

Anna began howling, and struggled to break free of her bonds. Her face was contorted into an ugly grimace, and she bared her teeth at the people wheeling her in, including her parents, who stood solemnly on either side of her, not looking up at their daughter's face. They were a lot older than they had been in the previous movie, since they had aged like normal humans.

One of the dark-hooded people turned around.

"Bring the girl to the center," he said in an old man's voice, and the hooded people parted so that Anna could be wheeled into the center. She was positioned right in front of the shrine, which seemed give off low tremors in response to Anna's proximity, rumbling in the night with a hollow sound that attempted to undercut the hooded people's chants.

"This shrine is a relic that keeps alive the being that has taken over Anna Dean's physical body," the old man said to the parents. "Destroying it will release the being from its earthly bonds, and allow it to find repose in the afterlife."

Then the old man joined his brethren. The chants, Anna's howls, and the rumbling of the shrine all grew louder in concert. Then the shrine began to give off a dim red glow, as if the stone were being heated from underneath by a fire.

"Diedrich," said the old man to the hooded person to his left. "Bring forth the hammer."

The man named Diedrich reached for a large sledgehammer behind him. Its head was made of black metal, and its body was carved with various arcane symbols.

"Destroy the shrine."

Diedrich struck the shrine on its side with the sledgehammer, causing sparks to fly. Anna began howling, blood streaming down her face from her eyes like tears. The chants of the hooded people shot up to a fever pitch as Diedrich struck the shrine again. Cracks appeared in the stone, glowing white-hot in the night. A third strike, and the stone broke in half, and toppled over. A shadowy figure rose from Anna's body, taking the form of the zombie hag from the two previous movies, and disappeared into the night with a wistful sigh.

The chants ceased. Anna stopped howling, and lay unconscious on the cross.

The old man lowered his hood, and smiled at the parents.

"Your daughter has been returned to you."

Anna's parents clasped each other's hands, and wept.

The final scene showed Anna and her family a couple of years later. Anna's parents sat on a couch, and looked lovingly down at their daughter, who was playing on the floor with her one-year-old son. Life was back to normal for them, even if it took a while to get there.

"That was actually a bit tame compared to the first two," said Maki. "I was expecting the ghost to fight back, and ruin the ritual."

"It was interesting to note the similarities to Kiyota's experience," said Hanagata. "William Mackenzie's two portraits were like the stone shrine in the movie, and destroying them allowed him to pass peacefully into the afterlife. Kiyota, it appears your theory has been confirmed."

Mitsui snorted.

"Yeah, the same way _Shrek_ confirms that donkeys can talk."

Hanagata ignored him.

"Where's Sakruagi?" said Fujima.

"He left halfway into the movie," said Mitsui with a laugh.

"What a pussy," said Kiyota with a smirk.

"My place next week," said Kogure as they headed out.

"What're you thinking of watching?" said Fujima.

"I'm thinking of getting that Disney movie I talked about. Maybe _Pocahontas_."

"No, seriously," said Mitsui. Then his smile died. "You're serious?"

"Yeah," said Kogure. "I just feel like watching something a little different after that spate of horror movies."

"We're going to have to tie you up in a corner, then," said Maki.

Rukawa coughed softly behind Sendoh.

"What about our one-on-one?"

"Now? It's almost eleven."

Sendoh saw that Rukawa didn't care.

"Okay then," he said with a sigh, and departed with Rukawa to play basketball by moonlight.

And everyone else went his own separate way, to deal with worldly responsibilities for another week.

end.

* * *

A/N: This is the end. Hopefully it wasn't too over-the-top or too underwhelming.

This chapter was written entirely from scratch, because there was never really anything supernatural in the original story. (Anticlimactic, I know.) Somehow I never could (still can't) write supernatural things convincingly.

I have two other previously published Horror/Humor fics: _Nights at Kainan_ and _An Unforgettable Vacation_ , which I will consider editing and re-uploading, if people want me to, even though they seriously suck.


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